Stop Waiting…

How much of my life have I spent waiting?

A lot.

I like to think I am a fairly patient person.  I don’t get too upset at having to wait in line, or being stuck behind a slow driver.  This quality can be helpful much of the time.

It can also be a roadblock.

I have waited…

Waited for my life to begin.

Waited for fear to leave me.

Waited for others to change.

Waited to be okay with my body.

Waited for myself to be perfect so it would be safe to share myself with the world.

Waited for all the wrong things, and none of the right ones.

I have waited where I should have acted and made hasty decisions where I should have waited.  Needless to say, it didn’t work out too well for me.

Waiting, waiting, waiting.  Never doing.  And I could wait for the rest of my life and nothing would ever happen.  It was like that for a long time, I kept doing the same thing day in and day out, waiting for something to change.  I’m not sure where I got the idea that something would just magically change, but I operated under that notion for about a decade.

Years passed, and I did little.  Worked, ate, slept, worked out, obsessed and agonized over appearance, drank, got into relationships, got out of relationships, worked, ate, slept, worked out, starved myself, drank, etc.  I very rarely read or wrote or did anything that was creative or productive.

Certainly, I never tried anything new.  I never challenged myself.

My life was a mere existence.  It was flat… And even when I tried to convince myself I was living, I was never satisfied that I was.  I never wanted to remain like that… but I also wasn’t ready to do anything to change it.  Nope, I was waiting.  Forever waiting for my life to begin.

Thank God it did! And at that time, it wasn’t my own doing.  God intervened.  I started to find my way. 

But sometimes the initiative lies with us.

But sometimes I forget that, I fall into the waiting trap.  Waiting to do something new because I am afraid of doing it.  And God forbid I do something before my fear of that thing goes away.  Well guess what?  The fear doesn’t go away until I face it, so if I spend my life waiting for the fear to dissipate, I am going to be waiting until I am old and gray.  At the end, I’ll still be waiting…

I could be 100 years old waiting for my life to begin.

Thankfully I have realized that sometimes waiting is not the right thing to do.

Oftentimes we must practice prudence and patience.  We must wait for the right thought, the right inspiration.  But I am the type that can take prudence and patience and warp it into cowardice and procrastination. 

So, today, I am done waiting.

I am done waiting for my life to begin.

It’s here, it’s now.  All the world around me is filled with life and possibilities.  I don’t have to wait until I feel comfortable to go do something, I just have to do it!

What am I waiting for?

What are you waiting for?

Sometimes we must seize the day fearlessly! (Not with an absence of fear, but with less of it, with faith!)

Life. It’s all around us, scary, wonderful, exciting, beautiful! Ready for us to embrace it.